Epilogue: Fire Be Our Savior
by Ezzy67
Summary: Ralph has been put in an insane asylum and left there for two years after making it back from the island. How will he escape and who will help him? One-shot.


**A/N: Just a little something I did for my English class **

Ralph stared out the barred window at the gloomy, grief-stricken sky, matching his mood; his constant mood ever since he had been taken here two years ago. Why was he the one to have to suffer? Samneric had been released upon their look of innocence. The workers here viewed him as crazy and troubled. Unstable.

The Asylum for Boys in London was where he had been taken after arriving back from that island of misery. The littluns were returned to their parents, along with Samneric. The rest of Jack's tribe however had all been shot down after they saw the strange man questioning Ralph on the beach and had decided to attack him. One more blameless life was lost that day.

To not make problems "worse", Ralph had been denied any visitors. His father had perished while he was on the island, the last of his family now gone. He had heard the nurses speaking one time about a cute set of twins arriving every Wednesday to visit. Ralph knew Samneric still had faith in him.

He awoke on the flea-ridden cot to a soft tapping. Rays of streaked moonlight filtered in, causing an interesting display of light. The light rested in slats, illuminating two pale faces peering through the small square window.

"Sam! Eric!" He jumped off the cot, throwing himself against the door, staring at them hopefully. It was so refreshing to see a familiar face; or two, in that fact.

They smiled widely, waving erratically to him. He could not hear through the thick glass, but knew they were trying to tell him something by the goings of one twin's mouth and then the continuation of the other. He motioned to his ear, shaking his head. The twins nodded despondently, casting a look at their feet. Sam's eyes shot wide suddenly, jumping up and down excitedly, whispering in Eric's ear. Then both were jumping simultaneously, turning back to the glass to motion to Ralph to wait there.

"Where else do I have to go," he murmured, slumping back onto the cot. He acknowledged his chewed fingernails, kicked his feet in the dust, and waited what seemed like forever in the dismal prison.

Two bobbing figures appeared once again, beckoning him forward. He crossed the room in just a couple strides, glaring at them. A square silver lighter was shoved up against the window, engraved with scratches of old use. Ralph's eyes were wide with their reasoning, shaking his head unwillingly.

Sam flipped open the lighter, pretending to ignite it, Eric then going into a wild show of throwing his arms every which way, his face wracked with panic, running back and forth, past Sam again and again. Ralph threw up his hands, trying to stop them. They did, grinning at him. He nodded with finality, sighing to himself. He mouthed the word "Go" to them, taking a good few steps back from the door to ready himself.

It took about ten minutes for the siren to go off, Ralph almost beginning to think they had failed or chickened out. Ralph knew he was in the A Ward, so the nurses would reach him first. A short woman with her hair pulled back in a bun appeared outside, flailing with the set of keys to try and open the door. It creaked, the woman throwing it open, ushering him out of the room and telling him to stay put as she moved on to the other doors in the hallway.

As the dim lights began to flash with the frying electrical circuits, Ralph sped off down the hall in the opposite direction of the nurse. As he squandered past other patients, the smoke began to curl around his feet and ankles, the scent staining his clothes yet again, though this time it being his savior. His insides were in a terror, memories of the hunt for him flooding back into his mind. He pushed them away for now, knowing that this was his only chance out of here.

As he left the hall, he saw bright flashes of flames licking at the side of the wall, staggering into the clearing where the guard usually kept watch. He was gone at this time, most-likely helping the limited staff evacuate the building. He knew they would only work on saving those in the A and B Wards. The ones in the C and D Wards would probably pass away in the fire if it was not stopped, and the staff would be able to live with the thought, justifying in their heads that those patients were already too far gone to help or to care.

He had been put in here for wrong reasons. Why was he to blame for the boys disguised as savages? He had not told them to attack so selfishly, to kill another innocent being only trying to help. Hadn't Simon and Piggy been only trying to help, too? A tear escaped one of his eyes at the names that had gone long without being uttered, even in his mind.

His eyes stung with the smoke, crashing into walls as he ran blindly down the winding halls that had entrapped him for far too long. Those walls hadn't just kept him here, but on the island, too. The walls that had tried to hold him back from his civility, and now from society.

Ralph's heart dropped as he came around another corner, the air filled with smoke. He had passed the immediate danger already, but the real threat was still prominent, knowing he may never escape this prison. A mixed shadow flashed across the wall, Ralph immediately lunging, sprinting down the hall after it. Something called his name, urging him on.

If anything had ever mattered in the past three years, this was it. How fast he fled was the ultimate factor of whether or not he would ever make it back to the real world or be accepted back into society. Suddenly, there was a person running on either side of him, the combined smacking of their feet on the concrete masked by the horror of people screaming in the distance somewhere.

Heads tucked in, hands covering their mouths, the three pushed on, the tunnel becoming darker and darker as they left the flames behind, fighting through the smoke like fog on an overcast day.

A mere couple minutes had seemed like an eternity as they crashed into something that blocked their escape. Ralph's breath hitched, trapped in his throat, but was soon released as two heavy doors were pushed open and the smoke poured out of the building as they did, tumbling into the night.

Panting, Ralph gazed at the cloudy sky, catching a glimpse of a few stars that twinkled in the remoteness of the sky. He pushed himself up by his hands, looking at the twins lying on one another, also trying to catch their breath. They tilted their heads back on the grass to look at him, smiling and laughing when the realization hit them that they had made it. He crawled over, hugging the both of them, laughing carelessly along. A fire truck sounded in the air, and just as quickly as they had hit the grass, they were up again, bounding out of the openness and struggling to climb the iron fence as fast as possible, then running into the trees that surrounded the compound.

They huddled, watching silently as part of the building on the outside lit like a match, roaring to life. A moment later, the fire truck pulled up, men jumping out and hurrying into action. Rest assured that they had it under control, the three backed up from the outskirts of the trees and deeper into the mass of greenery.

"Thank you," Ralph said, looking at them.

"No problem, Ralph."

"Yeah, our pleasure," Eric replied.

Ralph's brow furrowed. "How exactly did you do it?"

Sam and Eric's eyes were alight with having him in their company. "Well," Sam began.

"You saw we had a lighter, right?"

He nodded.

Eric continued for Sam, "We crept underneath the desk where the old watchman was sleeping-"

"And lit some paper and wood-"

"On fire! Then we ran down the hall away from it-"

"And waited for you."

"We knew you would come."

"We had faith in you."

Ralph smiled at their amusing and cunning nature, trudging through the shrubbery after them. "So where to now?"

"Home!"

"With us!"

"Oh, Mum will love having you there-"

"And Papa can teach you so much-"

"Samneric!" He sighed and then laughed lightly. "Have you even asked your parents about this?"

"Well, no-"

"But they won't care-"

"I can't, guys."

Samneric stopped at the same time to turn to him. "Everything will be okay."

"Don't you trust us?" Sam wondered.

"You trusted us enough to get you out of there-"

"And we did-"

"Now you're safe. We saved you."

"Yes," Ralph smiled a little, "yes, you did." He began to walk again. "Let's go."

**Thank you for reading! I got the idea for his escape from the film Suckerpunch, if it seems familiar to any of you. Have a nice day!**


End file.
